Isabel Roberts - Oak Park, Illinois

Oak Park, Illinois

Isabel Roberts was among Wright's first employees when he left Louis Sullivan and opened his own studio in Oak Park, Illinois. Frank Lloyd Wright was one of a number of emerging architects who were part of a movement that Marion Mahony called The Chicago Group and later came to be known as the Prairie School.

The Chicago Group espoused Louis Sullivan's credo, "form follows function," which became evident in their work, hallmarks of which include: a close relationship of the building to the landscape, an openness and informality of the floor plans, large overhangs on the exterior structure, a use of horizontal bands and clustered windows and a restrained use of conventionalized forms from nature as a harmonious ornamental theme throughout each building. Also evident were the influences of Japanese architecture and the English Arts and Crafts movement.

An early researcher and author on the Prairie Period was Grant Carpenter Manson, who interviewed several of the Oak Park Studio members in 1939 and 1940, and wrote that in the studio Roberts worked as "bookkeeeper and general factotum" who "did occasionally try her hand at design and worked on some of the detail-drawings of her own house". Further clarification of Isabel Robert's role in the Oak Park Studio comes from Wright's son John Lloyd Wright, who observed first-hand the contributions made by Roberts and others in the Oak Park studio. John Lloyd Wright relates that William Drummond, Francis Barry Byrne, Walter Burley Griffin, Albert McArthur, Marion Mahony, Isabel Roberts and George Willis were the draftsmen. He further clarifies that they made up the five men and two women who each were making valuable contributions to Prairie style architecture for which Wright became famous.

Isabel Roberts has been described by Wright scholars as Frank Lloyd Wright's secretary, bookkeeper or office manager. What many have missed is that, like all employees at the time, she contributed to the lively and creative design atmosphere of the Studio. Wright biographer Brendan Gill calls Roberts "the office manager of the Oak Park studio". Similarly, Diane Maddex labels "Isabel Roberts, the office manager of his studio in neighboring Oak Park." David A. Hanks manages only the term "secretary" to describe Roberts' role. So, too, biographer Meryle Secrest defines Roberts' roll simply as: "Isabel Roberts, secretary". H. Allen Brooks skirts the issue with "Isabel Roberts, on the staff." This is consistent with Frank Lloyd Wright's writing about the Oak Park "…studio adjoining my home, where the work I had then to do enabled me to take in several draughtsmen and a faithful secretary, Isabel Roberts…" Grant Carpenter Manson wrote "Isabel Roberts, for whom one of the most celebrated Prairie Houses was built in River Forest in 1908, was not an architect; she was bookkeeper and general factotum at The Studio…" Manson's information was incomplete and inaccurate, as shown in the reference letter Wright wrote for Roberts in 1921, as noted below.

Melenaie Birk says Roberts was "a bookkeeper and assisted with drafting in Wright's Oak Park studio". Roxanne Williamson wrote: "Isabel Roberts managed the office but also seems to have done some drafting." Henry Russell Hitchcock and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., writing 45 and 55 years later, "Isabel Roberts, one of the drafters in his office". Notably, Thomas A. Heinz presents his view of Isabel Roberts' work while in Wright's employ, saying, "She was an architect in her own right and her talent and position in Wright's Oak Park office has been largely ignored and underestimated."

Isabel Roberts also produced some original designs for the leaded art glass windows in the Prairie houses. Among the light-screens she is known to have designed are those in the Harvey P. Sutton House in McCook, Nebraska. Charles E. White, Jr., who wrote valuable letters about his time as an architect in the Oak Park Studio, said that Roberts worked on ornamental glass in the spring of 1904, a time when the following projects were underway: Darwin D. Martin House, Burton J. Westcott House, Mrs. Thomas Gale House, Robert M. Lamp House and Unity Temple. The "light screens" in these may owe their design in part or in full to Roberts. Isabel Roberts is remembered by her extended family, today, as an architect.

More so than other Studio employees, Roberts was often part of the Wright family circle and was frequently a babysitter for their increasingly large family of six children. Photographs taken by Frank Lloyd Wright in front of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio show her with his wife Catherine, the children, his mother Anna and sister Maginel. Isabel Roberts and Catherine Lee Tobin Wright were exact contemporaries.

While she was in Wright’s employ, Roberts and her mother commissioned a house from Wright's studio, which is known as the Isabel Roberts House, in the Chicago suburb of River Forest. Some scholars contend that it is based on an unbuilt commission for Joshua Melson in Mason City, Iowa. The Isabel Roberts House was designed by Isabel Roberts, per her own statement, even though it has always been attributed to Wright, out of whose studio it emerged. The house was designed for Isabel and Mary Roberts to share, which they did for a decade before leaving Illinois. Also, according to her own statement, while in Wright's employ, Roberts designed the K. C. DeRhodes House in South Bend, Indiana, for her South Bend friend, Laura Caskey Bowsher DeRhodes.

After Wright went off to Europe with Mamah Borthwick Cheney in 1909, Isabel Roberts was among the remaining Oak Park Studio employees working to complete Wright's unfinished commissions. Wright had arranged for architect Hermann V. von Holst to oversee the work; he, with Studio employees Isabel Roberts and John Van Bergen, as well as Marion Mahoney and Walter Burley Griffin (who were by this time no longer employees but working under contract), brought what work they could to completion—much of it modified to Marion's designs. Then Roberts literally locked the doors of the Oak Park Studio, thus closing the productive Oak Park years of Wright's career. Roberts worked for William Drummond for about a year. During that time, the following works were on the boards: Ralph S. Baker House (1914–1915), 1226 Ashland Avenue, Wilmette, IL; John A. Klesert House (1915), Keystone Avenue, River Forest IL; First Congregational Church (1915), 5701 West Midway Park, Chicago, IL 60644.